


Scars

by geekyjez



Series: Romance Meme [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4001734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekyjez/pseuds/geekyjez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen stumbles across Katwynne Trevelyan in one of her weaker moments. In comforting her, he begins to wonder if perhaps his infatuation is not as one-sided as he had assumed. </p><p>Prompt fill for the romance meme: Cullen + Trevelyan - A Touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> _  
> [For reference, you can see Katwynne Travelyan's appearance here.](http://geeky-jez.tumblr.com/post/119738842888/katwynne-trevelyan-got-a-new-face-you-can-look)  
>  _

Cullen was surprised when he found the Inquisitor sitting along the battlements. She was curled in on herself, her back against the stone wall, her face buried in her hands. Katwynne heard his approach, looking mortified as she glanced up, quickly wiping at her cheeks. “Is everything alright?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

She pushed herself to her feet, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Nothing happened. Nothing specific. It’s just…” She let out a frustrated huff, rubbing her hands over her face. “Maker, this is embarrassing. I’m sure it’s not exactly comforting for you to find the Herald of Andraste having an emotional breakdown.”

“I believe I’m more sympathetic to that than you’d expect,” he said quietly. She let out a slow, shaky breath as he leaned against the wall beside her. “Would it help to tell me what’s troubling you?”

“It’s silly.”

“I doubt that.”

She studied his face for a moment before lowering her gaze, picking at her fingers. “Most days I can handle it. I don’t think about the responsibilities or the fact that everyone is depending on me to save the world. But sometimes I can’t help but question why Andraste chose me when my life has been nothing but chaos for the past year. I feel like I just can’t get my footing. Nothing is stable anymore and I feel like I’m being pushed along, you know? Just moving from one tragedy to the next and I can’t help feeling like this time isn’t going to be any different.” She paused, shaking her head, crossing her arms against her chest. “That probably sounds horrible, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Do you know why I left Ostwick? Why I was even at the Conclave?” Her brow furrowed, eyes wet as he shook his head. “Our Circle fell because the Templars attacked us. Some of us wanted to leave. We said the Circles had been dissolved, that they had no right to keep us there. We weren’t being violent but we didn’t exactly go willingly when they tried to lock us all in our rooms. Tensions escalated. Things got out of hand. Knight-Commander Walton ordered his men to stop us by any means necessary.” Cullen said nothing, watching as she pursed her lips, obviously struggling to maintain her composure. “Some of them refused, but most of them… How do you follow an order like that? People you’ve been living alongside for years and then suddenly you cut them down like it’s nothing?”

Cullen lowered his gaze. He knew precisely what that took. As a younger man, he would have followed that order without question. He would not have enjoyed it but he would have seen it as justified to kill her and her kind if they were trying to escape. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean _you_ , Cullen.” She let out a slow sigh. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s just that… Maker, I can’t even look in the mirror without thinking about that night.”

“Is that how you got your scars?”

She nodded. “One of them cornered me in the library. He was so young. I honestly think he was more scared of me than I was of him. But that didn’t stop him from…” She cleared her throat, swallowing hard. “I had to defend myself. He left me with no choice. I don’t regret what I had to do, but… It was all so senseless. Everything I’d known, everything I’d come to depend on and it was all over because our keepers feared us so deeply that they would see us dead before letting us go free.” She wiped again at her cheek, blinking back watering eyes. “I went to the Conclave because I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to go back to living in a Circle, but I wanted us to find some peaceable solution. Obviously that didn’t work out either.”

“We all had our hopes set on finding some way to end this war.”

“I feel stupid and vain for thinking it, but… I hate having to see what he did to me,” she admitted, rubbing the scar on her nose. “Your scar makes you look rugged. Mine are just ugly.”

“Don’t say that,” he whispered. He reached out, impulsively tracing the scar on the side of her face with his fingertips. Her eyes met his, wide and blue and tinged with pink. “They stand as reminders that you survived,” he added. “They do not make you any less beautiful.”

Her features softened, her brow lifting. “You think I’m beautiful?”

He felt a flutter in his chest, his breaths growing shallow. “I do,” he murmured. His eyes followed as his fingers lowered to the scar on her mouth, dragging down to her chin. “I mean… you are…” He felt as if the world around them stilled even as his thoughts raced past him. She was beautiful. He’d seen that the very first moment he met her, the image of her never drifting far from his thoughts. He tried to abandon it because he never thought it was worth pursuing. She was the Herald of Andraste, the Inquisitor. He was nothing more than her adviser, a former Templar to a mage who would never feel that way about him. It was not the first time he’d been faced with an infatuation that had no future. He had always assumed that she was no different. Yet now she looked up at him, her eyes stirring a long-buried hope that he had been wrong. She tilted her chin back, guided by his hand, her breaths quickening. He leaned forward ever so slightly, wetting his lips with his tongue and she parted her own, her eyes drifting closed. He’d thought of little more than this for weeks, but he never thought he could…. He never thought she would….

“Inquisitor?” The voice forced the two of them to part, Katwynne pulling away from his touch quickly as the messenger stared at them from the nearby doorway. “Pardon the intrusion, Lady Trevelyan. Leliana said she needed to speak with you urgently.”

“Right,” Katwynne started, her voice pinched as she cleared her throat, starting again. “Um… yes. I’ll…. Thank you. I’ll go to her at once.” The word runner nodded, retreating. Alone again, the Inquisitor faced him once more. “I should…”

“Of course,” he said, nodding.

She did not turn to leave, lingering instead in an awkward silence. Was she waiting for something? Did she want him to act? He had almost kissed her – she had wanted him to, hadn’t she? Did she want him to do so now? He watched her, looking for some sort of sign. He shouldn’t just pull her to him, should he? Had his opportunity to do so passed him by?

“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For listening and…” She shrugged, offering him a shy smile. “I feel better now.”

“If you ever need…”

“I know,” she said, cutting him off. There was another pause, another moment in which he felt the air around him was far too thin to breathe before she took a step back. “I’ll talk to you again later.”

“I look forward to it,” he said with a nod. “I mean… whenever you’re available, that is,” he added.

He swore he could see her cheeks growing red. “Right,” she agreed, backing away slowly. “Later, then.” He took a deep breath as she turned, rubbing the back of his neck as he watched her slip past the door.

He’d found it difficult to stop thinking about her before. Now he knew it would be virtually impossible.


End file.
